Strategies for enhancing workplace learning and retention

A promising and expanding biotech company successfully attracted talented and promising employees to a key European hub. The company, however, faced a retention challenge. Most of these promising young people were leaving the organization within two to three years of joining. Why did this happen? The company identified a significant issue through exit interviews. Despite employees giving high scores for their overall workplace experience, they perceived the organization’s “flat” structure as indicative of limited promotion opportunities and a lack of time for learning and development. Two key challenges emerged:

• Young employees tended to over-value promotions as the primary means of advancing their careers, often overlooking opportunities for personal growth and development within their current roles.
• Leaders, on the other hand, were heavily focused on the company’s growth, leaving them with little time to nurture the learning and development of their team members

This company’s experience highlights the importance of a strong learning culture, in which various elements influence one another. When an organization prioritizes and dedicates time to learning, it sends a clear message to its employees that they are valued and have the potential to grow. This realization encourages employees to explore opportunities for L&D within the organization, even in the absence of a well-defined hierarchy for traditional promotions.

People want opportunities to learn. Both to further deepen their current skills and learn new ones to help them progress in their career. As employees enhance their skills, they become more productive, benefiting both the individuals and the organization as a whole. It’s crucial for organizations to establish clear career trajectories aligned with employees’ growth aspirations, and organizational goals. 

Importantly, growth should not be confused with promotion; not all employees aspire to be managers; not all lawyers aspire to be partners in the firm. That doesn’t translate, however, to complacency. As described by Kim Scott in Radical Candor, real growth is about increasing one’s impact within an organization over time.

In an ideal world, employees have choices when it comes to career growth—learn and grow in their current role, move up within the organization or look for opportunities elsewhere. The latter, however, should not be the default. Losing employees is costly for companies, and increasingly so in today’s competitive labor markets. It’s not only the bottom line that is impacted by attrition. It often means losing your best people and their institutional knowledge, which can have a negative impact on team morale and may also sow the seeds of change in colleagues.

The challenge for companies is to foster a strong workplace learning culture focused on internal mobility, skill development and clear career paths. Doing so has the potential to positively impact organizations at multiple points along the talent development journey.

Attracting new employees

First off, offering employees opportunities to grow and learn in their jobs is a powerful way to strengthen the employee value proposition and attract new people (an important factor in today’s competitive job market). Findings from a recent Gallup survey study commissioned by Amazon found 65 percent of workers say the opportunity to participate in an upskilling program is an “extremely” or “very” important factor in evaluating an organization and deciding whether to take a new job.

Organizations can also signal to job seekers that, at the institutional level, they are investing time and effort into innovating and keeping up with current trends (such as generative artificial intelligence, for example). While many organizations may still be in the stage of discussing the potential impact of innovations like AI, those who are embracing the technology have the opportunity to showcase their developments. These efforts enhance the organization’s attractiveness to potential employees by increasing their value proposition for job seekers. 

Employee satisfaction

Once they are in a job, training becomes an important factor in employee satisfaction, perception of sense of being valued, and retention. The Gallup/Amazon study found that more than half of respondents were very or extremely interested in participating in training to upgrade their skills or to learn new skills that could help them advance their careers. In addition, 71 percent reported that job training and development increased their job satisfaction, and career advancement was the primary motivator for employee interest in training opportunities.

Employee retention

In the past few years, it has been difficult to avoid stories about the “great resignation.” Employees leaving their jobs at record rates makes attracting new employees important. It also means understanding why employees are leaving in the first place. Regardless of industry, research has found lack of advancement opportunities to be neck-and-neck with compensation as the main reason people leave their jobs. Research by Deloitte found that organizations with a strong learning culture had between 30-50 percent higher engagement and retention rates than those without one. And a 2022 SHRM report indicated that 76 percent of employees are more likely to stay at an organization if they have continuous training. 

Retention is also impacted by an employee’s ability to recognize opportunities for growth in their current organization. A recent Gartner survey found that only 33 percent of people looking for a new job in the prior 12 months, searched within their organization first, and around half of the job candidates surveyed were unaware of internal job openings at their current company. If the path forward or upward is not obvious, employees may think it easier to leave their position than to look for available opportunities within their current organization.

The case for creating a strong learning culture with a dedicated process to support continuous learning, increased impact and career growth is clear: 

• Employees want it and look for it when job seeking.
• It makes people better at their jobs which translates into added value for the organization.
• It boosts job satisfaction, engagement, motivation and loyalty. 
• It increases retention.

Without access to learning opportunities, it’s no wonder many employees see a move to another organization to be their only option for career advancement or personal growth. 

With these things in mind, what can you do to nurture employee growth and impact within your organizations? 

Next, we discuss concrete strategies leaders can implement to help ensure workplace learning is embedded within the workplace culture, is valued and utilized by employees, leads to measurable and relevant performance outcomes, boosts engagement and encourages employee retention. 

10 ways leaders can foster a strong workplace learning culture

Get to know your team members. Talk to your employees and learn about their strengths, dreams, frustrations and motivations. Understand that these things will evolve. Stay engaged in the process, and keep the discussions going. Doing so shows the employee that their development is important to you and reinforces the long-term relationship between the organization and the employee. 

Make clear the link between learning, skill development pathways and career growth. Employees want to see an obvious path to advancement and growth—so show it to them. Talk about upskilling and reskilling and aligning these opportunities to personal aspirations and organizational goals. Make sure employees know how to take advantage of learning opportunities in a meaningful way. Simply providing access to a large library of training courses is not the way to show employees that learning is connected to their personal goals. Don’t wait to discuss career goals at certain milestones (e.g., the end of the onboarding period, or the one-year mark). Instead, engage in proactive conversations with your employees about skills they would like to learn and which career paths interest them. 

Help people conduct their careers in ways that suit them. People are different. Don’t imagine everyone on your team has the same career goals or is on the same path. Not everyone necessarily wants to move into a managerial role. Some do. Others, however, may be happy excelling in their current role. Or may appreciate that the role affords them just the right level of challenge so they have time and energy left over to pursue activities or obligations outside of the workplace. 

Give people time to learn. Learning is hard and accumulates gradually. It can’t happen in one session or in a day or two. Rather it requires active engagement and relevant practice and application (both within training sessions and after). One way to demonstrate a commitment to ongoing learning is to begin with a robust onboarding experience. One that extends across the first year on the job. Then build opportunities into the workplace culture (during the workday, and regularly). Some organizations incorporate training into employees’ schedules at regular, predictable intervals. Providing this kind of periodic L&D opportunity can help hone employees’ skills, and establish a learning culture where continuous education is a clear organizational priority.

Make sure learning is relevant and employees see the benefit of participating. People learn best when they see the value and relevance of the content, outcomes, processes and relationships associated with learning. Employees will be more motivated to learn if they can see the personal benefits of what they are learning. It’s a balancing act of sorts; sometimes the benefits come from building job-related skills. Other times learning is focused on personal growth. These personal development opportunities, for example learning a new language, also help signal to employees that they are valued individuals within the organization.

Broaden the options and formats in which people are learning. Historically workplace learning conjures up images of all-day workshops or multi-day offsite events. These kinds of experiences tend to overload participants with too much information all at once—something we know is bad for learning. Ongoing learning can be embedded into the workplace, sometimes supported by digital platforms. Some employees prefer more guided learning experiences where training content and assignments are released on a schedule with clear milestones, as compared to self-paced learning. Utilizing different options and formats helps organizations curate customized L&D paths for their employees and better align to different roles and goals.

Incorporate social interactions into training. One way to do this is to offer team-based training opportunities, which have many benefits. Learning in a social context helps people recognize they are not alone in any confusion they may have, illuminates different perspectives, builds empathy, and provides intentional opportunities for collaboration.  Team training also ensures teams have shared experiences, understanding and knowledge, which makes it easier to leverage and apply what has been learned. There are, of course, some situations in which individual training is appropriate (e.g., training to address a specific deficit, an annual compliance refresher course, a course focused on a personal interest, etc.). Training people as a team, however, helps build cohesion and alignment within teams and encourages social support systems to emerge, which contributes to a stronger sense of belonging within the organization. 

Establish, evaluate and report learning outcomes. Often, training success is assessed only through approval ratings and positive feedback. Such ratings, however, do not truly gauge the impact of training. Measuring the impact of L&D investment necessarily depends on the type of training and the stated goals. Some kinds of training have more quantifiable impacts and can be connected to metrics like sales growth. For others, the impact may be seen in a more holistic way. Training outcomes for skills that may influence the overall workplace climate can be rated using peer and 360-degree reviews, as well as gathering feedback from relevant stakeholders. 

Check in on L&D initiatives and give frequent feedback. Employees are more likely to learn and grow when they receive specific, relevant, timely feedback from someone they trust. Have conversations with your employees about what they learned and how they are applying their new skills and knowledge in the workplace. Without these discussions, it becomes harder to tie employee growth and improvement to their learning experiences. 

Clearly outline and share internal mobility policies and procedures. Provide employees with easily accessible career paths, including information on available roles and steps required to reach desired positions or change roles. Give employees the option to sign up for notifications for relevant job openings. Take inspiration from Sam’s Club, an organization that values employee training and development. Sam’s Club experienced increased retention by promoting from within, with 75 percent of their managers starting as hourly associates, as reported in a SHRM article by Sam’s Club Senior Director of Field Learning and Development Jennifer Buchanan.

Note: Some of the above strategies may not be core competencies for your organization. In these cases, you may need to partner with learning expert consultants to help develop a strategy and process around evaluating training quality, collecting data and determining training impact. 

Concluding thoughts

The path to establishing a strong workplace learning culture that enhances learning, nurtures growth, boosts productivity and helps retain talent is multifaceted and requires a concerted effort from people at all levels of the organization. Leaders are in a unique position to exemplify the values of the organization and guide employees to learn and grow in meaningful ways. By implementing the ten strategies we outlined above, companies can create an environment that prioritizes and dedicates time to learning.

Moreover, an environment that values internal mobility, skill development, and creating clear career paths. Employees should be able to clearly see they are valued and have opportunities to grow and increase their impact within the organization.